


Wasting

by Olive343



Category: Worm - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 16:48:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3216344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olive343/pseuds/Olive343
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madison is one of Nilbog's creations, who wandered out of Ellisburg undetected somehow. Nilbog's creations only live for a few years. Madison's approaching the end of her lifespan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wasting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mortifer](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Mortifer).



When it was born it had felt Father's distress. He was no longer winning, no longer expanding outwards. To be sure, he was not losing but -  
  
But he had wanted to  _win_. For once in his life, he had wanted to truly succeed.   
  
That was what it knew when it was born. They wanted to contain them, damning them all to slow death.   
  
That was what it was for, for  _escape_. It would live, survive, despite them.   
  
In  _spite_  of them.  
  
The thing that tunneled deep - deep enough that it escaped detection from the ones who would destroy it - was able where it's kin were not. It could learn faster, and on it's own. It could direct itself beyond the pheromones and behavioural coding that the others relied upon for direction.  
  
It tunneled until it reached water, and from there it began leaching oxygen out of the fluid. There was no passing of time, where it was. There were no threats here. No fires or chemical shells or fire-light-hands to hurt it. It does not think that this is truly escape if it binds itself to this lightless ocean. Not losing is not the same as winning, and that is what it was made for. Living is not just surviving.  
  
Stroking upwards, it comes to the roof of the world.   
  
Not enough. It is not enough to touch the sky, it wants (what is want?) to punch through.   
  
It does.

* * *

It can have fangs and canines that tear through flesh and clawed hands that rend stone but these are not what is best. What is best is soft skin, sharp incisors and heavy molars, and blunt fingers. What is best is not the ability to kill but the ability to go unnoticed. Small, unobtrusive. What is best is them.  
  
With a shudder it heaves it's flesh until it looks right. Their females were closest to what it was, so that is what it would be. What  _she_  would be.

* * *

She flickers through faces, ages, lives, as she tries to live. But it is hard. She does not know how to live like they do. She thinks she wants to.

* * *

Ostracism from the group can be caused by many things. Weakness, infirmity, deformity, illness, age. In complex animals, it can be due toextremely poor social standing in relation to an alpha specimen.  
  
In humans, it can be none of these. To be sure, she has deformity - her eyes malfunction - and to be sure, her body type is not optimised the way Sophia's is, but she cannot say with certainty  _why_  Emma hates Taylor.  
  
It becomes more perplexing as Taylor changes. Human-typical endurance musculature hangs on her like cords. Her poor coordination is replaced with something altogether different. Alien. Almost like being amongst her (it's) family. She sees awareness in Sophia, dismissed. She sees nothing in Emma. She follows them because she does not wish to break routine.  
  
That evening, after she tips juice on Taylor, she is wracked with coughs and when she recovers she can see that there is blood (red, for hiding) outside of her.  
  
When Taylor leaves, Sophia hardly notices. Nor does she. Emma, for a while, is triumphant. She is the alpha that has driven out the weak, the infirm. Then she grows melancholy and she cannot say why. It is clear that her satisfaction was short-lived.  
  
She wishes she understood humans better so that she could know  _why_. 

* * *

This adversity, she knows as rain hammered down, is not something that humans are built for. Not in the slightest.  
  
The wall of water slams into her at the waist and almost cuts her in half. She softens her bones, sheds her clothes and her shoes, and flows out with the wall of water as it recedes into the bay. She hides in dribs and drabs that collect in the city, finally sequestering herself into what she believes is a safe haven. Then Leviathan tears the water out of the earth and she falls into reservoir beneath the city.  
  
It is, she realises, the sunless ocean.  
  
Is this full circle?  
  
When she pulls herself out of the water, calcium crystals reformed, she vomits up the lining of her stomach.

* * *

She stands on an island in the middle of the crater lake. As the city drains from the top down, more and more water collects here shifting and pulling down the buildings that were, admittedly, barely standing. The lake is growing.  
  
Looking up at the sky, she remembers her fist pulling herself up into the roof of her world. The sky is overcast still, days afterwards, and it still rains occasionally.  
  
She imagines reaching to the sky and pulling herself up to it, like before.  
  
Her insides ignite as she reconfigures everything, until she does not have insides to burn the same way a human does. She gives the membranous flaps an experimental twitch, shaking them once, twice, until she is satisfied.  
  
Right now, they hold the majority of her body mass.  
  
Once, twice, and she is airborne. She knows of a dozen methods for achieving flight biologically, and such large wings are not often amongst them. They should be supplemented by hollow bones or gas bladders or simply a smaller body.  
  
But they are not her. Making herself smaller is not her. Lifting herself up would be easier if it (not she anymore, not like this) was lighter. But it wants - _needs_  - to do this on it's own.   
  
By the time it has reached the cloud barrier, it is more depleted than it had expected. It keeps going though. It cannot stop now. Not now when it is halfway dead.   
  
When it sees sunlight again, at once closer and farther away than ever before, it is the most beautiful thing it can remember. It's eyes close.

* * *

Whistling winds are it's return to the world. It is far too close to the ground for it to spread it's wings to spread without the complete set snapping off like so many autumn leaves. Better this than drawing it out, it thinks. Perhaps exhaustion is the reason it does not notice the cloth   
unfurling beneath it like an enormous parachute on the wrong side of the sky. All it sees is the dark ground rushing upwards.

* * *

The little woman, Parian, doesn't know what to make of it. It knows that it''s features are uncanny - human enough to convey gratitude, not human enough to properly express it. But behind her mask she sees something behind the one it wears and lets it go. Or perhaps she can see that it’s wings are already beginning to draw into herself?  
  
The trampoline slides her off quietly and she takes unsteady upright steps once, twice, then vomits again, a bounty of precious fluid she can scarce afford to lose.

* * *

Even as she dies, Parian continues to insist that she eat and she cannot fathom this woman’s generosity.   
  
She tells her that it's not worth it, that she's too sick to get anything worthwhile out of it. In the end she minimises her digestive tract to make herself unable to eat and to put something back into her muscles. It's a miracle recovery and she smiles her best smile at Parian when she steps out under the sunshine.

* * *

The mist is the entire world. A thick and bloody world that is both unfamiliar and not. Deja vu.   
  
She hears someone approaching behind her and snarls, swinging at the source. Her over tense muscles are thick with power and so it's a surprise when her hand shatters on something harder than concrete. She cries out and it's much more of a 'she' sound than an 'it' one.  
  
So shocking is the injury that she nearly doesn't notice the hand on her arm. The shocked inhalation though, she hears just fine.  
  
"W-w-what  _are_  you?"  
  
Who is this? She cannot see them, does that mean that she has gone blind?  
  
"I..." But what actually is she? Is it... she? This thing; is it Madison Clements? Is that even what this person is asking? "I think I am what I was made to be."  
  
"You're not human." There is no question, and she thinks this might be Amy Dallon and she wants to move her arm away but cannot.  
  
"No." Because of course she isn't. "I am what Father made me."  
  
Amy's breath shudders when she hears that, and she doesn't know why. "You're dying," she says, and she thinks that Amy might not even be talking to her because she knows that as plainly as the meals she is unable to eat.  
  
"Yes. I think that Father couldn't make me perfect, or perhaps I didn't learn enough for myself, and so I'm dying."  
  
Amy is silent for a long moment after that but it's alright. She was more leaning than standing and she probably couldn't move even if she wanted to, touch on her arm notwithstanding.  
  
"There," says Amy, and she sounds far wearier than before and already turning away, "you should be fine, I think."  
  
"I..." She doesn't know what to say. "Thank you," she says, and she's not sure if Amy even hears it. "Why though?"  
  
"Your father shouldn't define you."

* * *

She isn't sure what leads her back to Parian's shelter. Perhaps because she is the first person to see her as it or maybe it's simply because she found herself bizarrely enjoying the time they spent together.  
  
Or maybe she just wants to be there.  
  
She knocks on the door and smiles at the small woman inside.


End file.
